Feature Index Page 8

You've probably seen our coverage and tests over the past few weeks on the Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities, or more specifically the performance drops you can expect from the patches that address these issues. We've already covered what you can expect on modern desktop systems, however today we'll be diving into the mobile side of things to see how Meltdown and Spectre patches affect ultraportable laptops.

If you've grown tired of answering those annoying browser prompts every time a website wants to show you notifications or know your location, you can turn the messages off forever with a few clicks in every major browser.

We're hardly two weeks into 2018 and it's been a wild ride for the tech industry already. Just as we thought graphics card pricing was settling down, it has skyrocketed higher than ever. We discuss the reasons why this scenario has provided the perfect storm for holding off on your next GPU upgrade.

There was plenty to be excited about PC hardware in 2017, but there's a lot to be upset about as well. Part one of this series will be dedicated discuss DDR4 memory pricing and why it's so high. RAM pricing is currently a big issue plaguing those wanting to build a new computer or update an old one, more than doubling in price in less than two years.

Although we've thoroughly benchmarked PU's Battlegrounds at this point and it's based on the same UE4 engine, we're interested to see just how much better optimized Fortnite is and we know many of you are as well having read all of your requests for this one. Fortnite's Battle Royale mode has proven to be quite popular, attracting millions of players in a short few months.

Following up to our initial testing of the Meltdown patch for Windows 10, today we're looking deeper into the matter by testing a patched desktop system, by addressing the two now famous security flaws, Meltdown and Spectre, by applying the OS-level patch and a firmware update, more precisely a motherboard BIOS update.

Are you the next Dr. Disrespect? Are you the best Rocket League player you know? Is your incessant couch commentary so entertaining to your gaming friends that they've asked you to never, ever stop? Probably, then, you've thought about streaming on Twitch.

The IT world was caught by surprise this week when Meltdown and Spectre hardware flaws were disclosed. With OS patches coming in, including an emergency fix for Windows 10, we've conducted a set of tests in the last 12 hours to see what impact this update has on performance for desktop users, if any at all.

After a surprisingly robust 2017, our collective attentions now turn to the new year, and many questions arise as to what will happen in 2018. Here's a reasoned look at some key themes I expect to drive important advances in the tech industry in 2018.

Following up on last month's CPU-focused benchmarks, we're back to see how PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds performs on a massive range of graphics cards: we have an epic battle between Radeon and GeForce GPUs.

It's nice to talk about all the great games that were released this year, but we're also not going to let slide the games that really disappointed us, and there's a few that stick out like a sore thumb. The following games simply weren't good enough; far from it in fact.

There will come a time when you need to access your router's browser interface. Though you can typically find the information by entering 'ipconfig' into the Windows command prompt, if for some reason that method fails, we've compiled a list of popular brands and typical default router IP addresses.

Repairing a faulty gadget no longer requires a PhD in electrical engineering with sites like iFixit providing tutorials that empower people to repair things on their own. After all, if your device is no longer under warranty and the only option is to buy a replacement, what's the harm in trying? Complexity, that's what.

Virtual reality has become something of a fascination once again as consumer devices like the Oculus Rift and PlayStation VR have hit the scene. For 1995, the Virtual Boy was very ambitious and took a lot of risks showcasing an idea that had not yet been explored by home console makers. So how did they accomplish such a feat?

As ever, PC remains at the forefront of gaming. Whether it's the platform's advantage in hardware, its role as a breeding ground for interesting indies, or attempts to solve the mind-boggling logistical problem of offering nearly Every Game Ever, PC leads so many dances that you'd need to be a human centipede to keep up.

For all the video game industry's noisy hype about groundbreaking technology, it's still rare that a device comes along and actually breaks new ground. In just nine months, the Nintendo Switch has done just that.

Technology may shape the world we live in today, but there are many tech lovers who still consider themselves a bit awkward. But it isn't just the fans that can be bit "socially uneasy" - plenty of moments within the industry have made us cringe over the years. Here are some of the most toe-curling.

As technology migrates from our desktops and laptops to our pockets and bodies, databasing and deep learning will allow for society to be optimized from the micro to the macro. Here are 5 technologies that may not be on your radar today, but they sure are approaching closer and are expected to become very relevant very soon.

The holidays are upon us and it's time to start thinking about gifts for friends, family, and why not, yourself as it's often the case those closer to you like to ask what you're wishing for the most. We've built a shortlist of some of our favorite and most recommended tech gear in various categories covering PC hardware, to electronics and gaming.

Measuring the impact that RAM capacity has on gaming is harder than it sounds because of all the factors at play. However we've tested different hardware configurations to determine how much memory is truly useful for gaming from 4GB up to 32GB.

Following up on the mini-test we did for PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds back in June, it was about time we checked where the game's performance is at after receiving countless updates. Focusing on CPU performance, we have all 8th-gen Core processors, all Ryzen CPUs, and a few from the 7th-gen Core series.

To help you take the best photos with your phone, we've laid out ten handy tips we find ourselves using every day. From a photography enthusiast and mobile hardware reviewer, with this knowledge in hand, you'll be able to produce some awesome shots from a fairly limited though continually improving camera platform.

A few weeks ago we put together a list of what we felt were the worst CPU and GPU purchases of 2017, and boy did that stir up some discussion. Still overall many of you really seemed to enjoy the exchange and requested a best of version, so here we are, our best CPU and GPU purchases of 2017. So let's get into it...

You'll often find that when a new product or service fails, there's a line of people waiting to say, "I told you so." But despite initially looking like absolute turkeys destined for the trash can, there have been plenty of predicted tech disasters that turned out to be successful. Here are some of the most memorable.

Today we're doing a little benchmarking, a little playing around with Assassin's Creed Origins to see how it behaves on different CPUs. For those of you unaware Assassin's Creed Origins was recently released, and it has been creating a bit of a stir in the PC tech community due how aggressively it utilizes the CPU.

Products like the Apple Newton and the Nintendo Power Glove immediately come to mind when reminiscing about technology that was before its time. However this article will focus on products and services that didn't necessarily flop out of the gate and all had a vision that helped shape today's technological landscape.

Today we're discussing what we feel were the worst CPU and GPU purchases of 2017. Some were just bad from the get go while others started life as viable options that sadly proved poor choices before year's end.

The deep web is not actually a 'place' but rather anywhere other than the visible web that is crawled, indexed and accesed through links fetched by search engines. It's several times bigger than the visible web, and it encompasses a lot more than the illegal or otherwise questionable activities that it is often associated with -- though there's certainly a lot of that going on, too.

Over the years we've seen our fair share of tech flops, and while some very quickly explode in a ball of hot, fiery failure, others linger around for years before slowy fading away into obscurity. In no particular order of uselessness, here are our top ten biggest tech fails of the last ten years.